Graffiti Tag Names

I remember whenever I used to observe art classes in college, there was one high school art teacher in Union City, Hilary Webb, who did a unit over graffiti to her classes. I remember them coming up with so much awesome work and how much they LOVED learning about it. Ever since then, I knew I would want to teach graffiti to each of my classes every year.

If you are not teaching graffiti right now as an art teacher, I would strongly adivse you start. This is an amazing thing to teach on to our students. It's such a big part of their culture and generationa and it really does apply to them so much. I have taught graffiti to all ages, and I have yet to have a student (yes, even those troublesome ones!) who did not enjoy this unit.

I usually start off by a PowerPoint that opens up in discussion over the topic of graffiti. Do you think it should be illegal? Why or why not? What are some ways our cities can prevent art vandalism? I also make it clear to them that IT IS A CRIME if you graffiti property THAT IS NOT YOURS. Then I follow up with a lot of examples of graffiti from all over the world. The internet is FULL of amazing graffiti examples, and the kids will be so blown away!

I've done a wide variety of projects for graffiti. For 7th Grade I decided to keep it simple and assign them a "graffiti tag name" drawing. They all had to come up with a tag name, like all graffiti artists and create a signature. I loved this project! I feel like it was a great first time graffiti project especially for younger ages. When you get up higher in grades you can play around some and require them to draw more letters, but I was so impressed with these. They all had a lot of fun coming up with their own tag names too. Here are just a FEW that turned out awesome.

Texture Hands with Ms. Jessica

Ms. Jessica has been taking over my classes for the past week and a half- and doing a great job! 6th grade just finished up their sketchbook assignment for texture. Their assignment was to trace their hand in their sketchbook and fill in each finger using a different type of texture. It was cool to see how each students' looked different considering they all were drawing the same surfaces. I could tell they were very impressed with the way their drawings turned out.

Sorry for the bad quality pics...

Op Art Drawing display

I finally went and bought myself some bulletin borders for this bulletin board I have outside my class. But I did not get ENOUGH. Way to go, Mal, way to go. I am going to look into getting 2 more boards this size. One for each grade would be great.

Here is the Op Art display (still more to come). I'm overall happy with my kids and their work. This is just a win project for everyone.

8th Grade Zentangles

Here are some of the finished zentangle landscapes done by my 8th grade classes.

Op Art Cubes

This week 7th Grade will be studying the art style of Op Art and their next project will be Op Art cubes. I found this on the ever-so-awesome Pinterest. I was so thrilled when I introduced this project they acted SO excited about it. We had to spend a day practicing drawing different designs on paper first since I am so limited on project paper. Oh my lanta they were upset. "WHAAAAT? We can't start on them NOW? :(((( " It's so nice seeing them get so excited about their projects! I'm currently working on creating templates for them to trace for the outline of their cube. We will draw on our templates, cut them out and assemble them last. I am a little nervous about the assembling part because it mostly reminds me of teaching origami and how CHAOTIC that experience has been in my life. They seem smart though. Hopefully they will get it without all the sweat and tears. 

Here are some other great examples I found online to give my students some inspiration. updates to come!

Laterz!!

-Mrs. G

6th Grade Pointillism Animals

Sadly I wasn't able to do this project with watercolor and Q-tips. So since they were to do it with markers, I gave them a much smaller drawing surface which I believe helped out tremendously. Nevertheless, this is a very challenging project and I was reminded of the different challenges of doing this project with markers. I am glad I made them buy their own markers for this project because a lot of them absolutely DESTROYED their supplies with tapping too hard. I tried my best to constantly remind them to be GENTLE and hold their markers like a marker and use their wrists, not their entire arm to make dots. I still love doing stippling because..

1.) It teaches them to take their time on art... you can not rush stippling and make it look good!

2.) It teaches them patience.

3.) IT KEEPS THEM BUSY!!!!! ---- What teacher does NOT like a project that keeps them quiet and busy!

Here are some of the great finished products!

Laterz!

-Mrs. G

7th Grade Nouveau Movie Posters

This is a bit of a change from my movie poster project I did last semester with 8th grade. My 7th grade classes are studying time periods in art-- this unit we studied Art Nouveau (one of my all time favorites). We also discussed how it was used as an early time advertising for multiple things during the 1900s. This project called for them to design a poster for a modern movie in the style of Art Nouveau. I got inspiration from these movie poster examples, though they are more Deco than Nouveau. 

And here are some student examples-- way more to come!

The Lorax

Can not WAIT till hers is finished!

Les Miserables

The Hunger Games

Percy Jackson

Transformers

The Sound of Music

Star Wars

Monsters Inc